New Twitter Cam Makes Capturing Breaking News Easier

Instead of tapping twice to first compose a new tweet and then open the camera, simply swipe left from your feed.

Rolling out now to all users, the function can automatically tag pictures to specific locations or events, and allows for captions as colorful text overlay.

“We’re trying to make it really simple to go from capturing what’s happening, to getting it to the audience that really matters and getting it to the people who want to talk about it,” Keith Coleman, Twitter’s vice president of product, told Mashable.

Notably, these features apply only to snaps taken directly in the Twitter app. Attaching a photo or video from your camera roll will result in normal-looking tweets—a move that, according to Coleman, was very intentional.

Twitter’s new camera, after all, is meant to encourage in-the-moment sharing.

“If Twitter has always been sort of the microphone or megaphone in your pocket, we want it to feel like this was almost the TV camera in your pocket,” he said.

This marks the first significant update to the social network’s in-app shooter “in some time,” Mashable reported.

See it? Tweet it! (via Twitter)

But it’s not a challenge to social media rivals Instagram Stories and Snapchat; this refresh isn’t aimed at selfies or fleeting content. Instead, it is an invitation to citizen journalists and documentarians to capture important events and breaking news.

“The first moment that pictures mattered on Twitter was when a plane landed in the Hudson,” Coleman pointed out. “If it was an ephemeral picture … it would have had a very different effect than if it was a picture that was live for the world to see that could go viral.”

(Ironically, the “Miracle on the Hudson” photo did eventually disappear from the microblogging service, Mashable said, because the company didn’t have its own photo-sharing capabilities at the time.)

Twitter did not immediately respond to Geek’s request for comment.

The camera launch comes just as Twitter’s new prototype app “twttr”—an experimental testing space initially focused on testing conversation designs—began rolling out to its first group of testers this week.